Drought-gate

Andrew Bolt notes another incompetent IPCC claim -- this one about Australia

Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and: "This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…

In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.

“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

But now comes the latest evidence that Rudd and Karoly were wrong: in fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters:

Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual timeseries of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…

However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.

What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.

And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:

Karoly was cited very extensively in the AR4 WG1 paper.e.g. Chapter 9 9.4.2.3 Studies Based on Indices of Temperature Change and Temperature-Precipitation Relationships."Studies based on indices of temperature change support the robust detection of human influence on continental-scale land areas. Observed trends in indices of North American continental scale temperature change, (including the regional mean, the mean land-ocean temperature contrast and the annual cycle) were found by Karoly et al. (2003) to be generally consistent with simulated trends under historical forcing from greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols during the second half of the 20th century. In contrast, they find only a small likelihood of agreement with trends driven by natural forcing only during this period.

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GLOBAL WARMING TO BECOME GLOBAL COOLING, CLAIMS EXPERT

Strange that we are not hearing cries of 'denier', 'holocaust denier', 'sceptic', 'flat-earther' against this guy. Where is Al Gore now? It looks like the uncovering of climate fraud has gone beyond the tipping point

GLOBAL warming is set to become global cooling this century, a leading analyst claimed yesterday. Professor Michael Beenstock said theories of climate change are wrong. He warned climatologists have misused statistics, leading them to the mistaken conclusion global warming is evidence of the greenhouse effect. He told London’s Cass Business School that the link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures is “spurious”, adding: “The greenhouse effect is an illusion.”

The economics professor from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that just because greenhouse gases and temperatures have risen together does not mean they are linked. He claims that the real cause of rising temperatures is the sun, which he says is at its hottest for over 1,000 years but is “beginning to stabilise”.

Professor Beenstock said: “If the sun’s heat continues to remain stable, and if carbon emissions continue to grow with the rate of growth of the world economy, global temperatures will fall by about 0.5C by 2050.”

Citing predictions by climatologists in the 1970s of a new Ice Age, Professor Beenstock said: “I predict that climatologists will look equally foolish in the years to come. Indeed, it may be already happening.”

The Met Office said the first decade of this century is the warmest since records began 160 years ago, and 2009 the fifth warmest year. It maintains that rising carbon dioxide levels increase temperatures. Since the Industrial Revolution CO2 levels have risen 37 per cent.

Meanwhile, Professor Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit – the expert at the centre of the Climategate scandal – said he had considered suicide and had death threats over leaked emails which appeared to show scientists rigging the data.

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Even the NYT has deigned to take notice of doubts about the IPCC

The following was published under the headline "Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel". Viscount Monckton even gets a mention

Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist’s version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations’ climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.

But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri’s resignation last week.

Critics, writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm — a claim he denies.

They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel’s landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.

The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics — including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms — in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

With a global climate treaty under negotiation and legislation pending in the United States, the climate panel has found itself in the political cross hairs, its judgments provoking passions normally reserved for issues like abortion and guns. The panel is charged by the United Nations with reviewing research to create periodic reports on climate risks, documents that are often used by governments to guide decisions, and its every conclusion is being dissected under a microscope.

Several of the recent accusations have proved to be half-truths: While Dr. Pachauri does act as a paid consultant and adviser to many companies, he makes no money from these activities, he said. The payments go to the Energy and Resources Institute, the prestigious nonprofit research center based in Delhi that he founded in 1982 and still leads, where the money finances charitable projects like Lighting a Billion Lives, which provides solar lanterns in rural India. “My conscience is clear,” Dr. Pachauri said in a lengthy telephone interview.

The panel, in reviewing complaints about possible errors in its report, has so far found that one was justified and another was “baseless.” The general consensus among mainstream scientists is that the errors are in any case minor and do not undermine the report’s conclusions.

Still, the escalating controversy has led even many of them to conclude that the Nobel-winning panel needs improved scientific standards as well as a policy about what kinds of other work its officers may pursue. “When I look at Dr. Pachauri’s case I see obvious and egregious problems,” said Dr. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist and professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado. He said that serving as an adviser to financial companies was inappropriate for the chairman of the United Nations’ panel, whether Dr. Pachauri received payment directly or not.

Dr. Pachauri bristles at the accusations, which he says are “lies” or “distortions” promulgated by groups hoping to undermine climate legislation and a treaty. “These people want to distort the picture for their own ends,” Dr. Pachauri said, noting that the report was released two years ago and that the criticisms were only now coming into the limelight. “What we’re doing is not only above-board, but laudable,” he said. “These guys want me to resign, but I won’t.”

Dr. Pachauri, 69, said the only work income he received was a salary from the Energy and Resources Institute: about $49,000, according to his 2009 Indian tax return, which he provided to The New York Times. The return also lists $16,000 in other income, most of it interest on accounts in Indian banks. Dr. Pachauri acknowledged his role as an adviser and consultant to businesses, but he said that it was his responsibility as the panel’s chairman to disseminate its findings to industry.

Nonetheless, Christopher Monckton, a leading climate skeptic, called the panel corrupt, adding: “The chair is an Indian railroad engineer with very substantial direct and indirect financial vested interests in the matters covered in the climate panel’s report. What on earth is he doing there?” A former adviser to Margaret Thatcher who also assailed Dr. Pachauri in a critique in Copenhagen that has since been widely circulated, Lord Monckton is now the chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and education institute that states on its Web site: “Proved: There is no climate crisis.”

As the accusations have snowballed in the last six weeks, Dr. Pachauri remains widely admired for his work on the intergovernmental panel, which relies on the collaborative work of hundreds of volunteer scientists to sift through current scientific evidence for its reports. He has served in an elected, unpaid position as chairman of the panel, often known by its initials, I.P.C.C., since 2002. “There is no evidence that outside interests affected Pachauri’s leadership of the I.P.C.C. at all,” said Hal Harvey, chief executive of ClimateWorks, a foundation based in San Francisco that focuses on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The panel’s process is so “robust and transparent” that it could not be undercut by “personalities or errors,” he said.

He added, “Anyone who is qualified to chair the I.P.C.C. will have interests in academics, science, politics or business; there are thousands of scientists on the I.P.C.C., and you need their expertise and they all have to come from somewhere.”

Many government panels in the United States tolerate overt conflicts of interest in order to get expert advice, Mr. Harvey said, noting that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase on its board.

But most scientific agencies have explicit conflict-of-interest policies to ensure that expert advice is impartial. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, asks doctors who serve on drug advisory panels to disclose payments from pharmaceutical companies and can disqualify those whose financial involvement is too great.

More HERE




America's Global Warming Terrorists

Alan Caruba comments on Obama's new climate "service"



It should tell you something about the federal government’s puerile efforts to advance the global warming (now called climate change) fraud that it had to cancel a scheduled press conference at the National Press Club on February 8th because a huge blizzard had shut down the entire city. Instead, the announcement of a proposed new bureaucracy, a “Climate Service”, had to be made via a telephone conference call to those reporters either too stupid or too determined to maintain the hoax.

The fact that the Obama administration would attempt to set up a NOAA Climate Service reveals that the same cabal of warmists within the administration are determined to keep the global warming fraud alive and to make U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab. These people constitute a relentless enemy of scientific truth.

Joe D’Aleo, a respected meteorologist, reacted to the news saying, “This was expected. A climate super agency was talked about for years. Could NOAA and NASA have been competing by seeing who could be warmest and take home the prize? NOAA’s statements showed how this whole climate nonsense is politically driven…”

NOAA, for example, is warning of “earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons”, but Steven Goddard points out that “what NOAA isn’t saying is that snow is falling earlier and heavier in the Northern Hemisphere. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab has reported that January was the sixth snowiest on record, and that six of the last eight Januaries were above normal snowfall.” February is set to break former record snowfalls.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is, according to Jane Lubchenco, PhD, an administrator, “committed to scientific integrity and transparency; we seek to advance science and strengthen product development and delivery through user engagement.” That is hogwash! A visit to NOAA’s new website, www.climate.gov, reveals how the same old lies about global warming are being trotted out to scare the heck out of a public that has long since concluded it is a vast pile of steaming hot lies.

It’s worth asking why a new climate bureaucracy is needed when, if you think about it, climate trends are measured in centuries! Do we need a “Climate Service” to tell us that the climate will change a thousand years from now? The proposal is absurd, but not if you see if from the point of view of an administration desperate to expand the federal government until it literally implodes.

The proposed agency would be led by Thomas Karl, the director of the current National Climatic Data Center, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and would have six regional directors across the country. All this to predict what the climate will be in 3010 and beyond! Consider that we already have a National Weather Service that has the best computer models available and a vast array of satellites with which to analyze the weather. At best it can only accurately predict what will likely occur over the next four days. Predicting next week’s weather is a roll of the weather dice.

Given the reports of how the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change devoted decades to fudging and jiggering the data on “global warming”, why would Congress even consider authorizing such a “climate service”? Some of those involved included IPCC scientists from academic meteorological centers in the U.S. and some are already under investigation for their role in the fraud, both here and in England.

NOAA and NASA consistently issued statements and reports intended to support the global warming hoax. Leading the effort was James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, who kicked off the entire hoax back in the 1980s by warning Congress of a completely invented scenario of an Earth endangered by human beings using energy resources from oil to coal.

Al Gore, a former Vice President, has massively enriched himself by scare mongering of the worst kind, aided and abetted by NASA and NOAA, along with determined effort to foist the worst kind of energy sources, wind and solar, on the nation with billion dollar subsidies to these and other “clean” energy entrepreneurs. He is part of an international cabal selling worthless “carbon credits.”

The “Cap-and-Trade” Act, still waiting action in the Senate, would impose a massive tax on Americans for the crime of using energy for any reason. It would destroy what’s left of our economy.

The Climate Service demonstrates that the most thoroughly discredited information and individuals within our government are still determined to push ahead with the global warming fraud. It not only needs to be stopped, but all those involved with it need to be investigated by Congress.

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Al Gore got it exactly backwards with his warnings, in the usual Leftist way

Al Gore is responsible for this. He taunted Mother Nature. Consider this her memo: Don't Presume To Know What I Have in Store. Here in Fairfax County, we thought we were prepared. I had purchased enough milk to last our family of five for a week. We had plenty of food. As the blizzard raged Friday night, we were tucked comfortably in the family room under blankets alternately watching a movie and observing the snow blowing sideways past the windows. The only interruptions to our comfort were the obligatory trips to the (decreasingly visible) driveway for Cali, our 10-week-old puppy.

It was around the 3 a.m. outing that the power went out. I hadn't really worried enough about that possibility. Though we often lose power due to summer storms, and occasionally if there's ice, snow has never before left us dark. But this is no ordinary storm. This is Al Gore's blizzard. My husband opened the garage door manually. We fumbled with flashlights to find Cali's leash and get her safely in and out. Back under the covers until 6 a.m., by which time the house was pretty cold and Cali needed to go out again. One of the kids did this trip. The snow was about 10 inches deep but the storm showed no signs of abating.

When the ambient temperature drops below 50 degrees, door handles send a chill down the spine, and we won't speak of bathroom experiences. A warm drink can make all the difference. But our cook top is electric, as is the oven. All was dark and inert. In good pioneer spirit, we lit a fire in the fireplace and used a stainless steel pan to boil water. Those silicon oven mitts have never done more useful service! Pour the boiling water over the (thankfully previously ground beans) et voila -- hot coffee. Slightly smoky tasting, but hot. The world is righted. Repeat procedure for the kids (yes, my teenagers drink coffee).

Our hot water heater uses gas, so we could at least wash our hands and faces in warm water. And unlike our less fortunate neighbors, we have county, not well, water so the lack of electricity doesn't shut down our water supply. But actually taking a shower, only to emerge into near freezing air, didn't seem appealing. We plugged in the one corded phone we keep for such emergencies. Dominion Virginia Power estimated restoration by 11 a.m. Thinking of Sisyphus, we started shoveling. Now there were 13 or 14 inches. We helped the stranded cars near our house dig out.

At 12:30, the power did jump to life, then faltered, then came back on. Rejoice! There was a rush to power up everything we could -- laptops, cell phones, BlackBerries. You could read by the light of the charge brigade. I threw a turkey breast and some potatoes into the oven -- and dashed upstairs for the shower and (bless you, Dominion Power!) the hair dryer.

As the inside temperature climbed, we noticed that our supply of firewood was getting unexpectedly low. Did you dig all around the rack? Some may have fallen and might be covered with snow. Yes. We were nearly out. Well, no problem. We had power. Until 4 p.m. -- that sickening sound of buzzing when your computer backup needlessly tells you what you already know. And the outside temperature was plunging into the teens. Now we had 34 inches of snow, just a few logs left, and approaching darkness.

We ate the turkey and potatoes by candlelight, and played a game around the kitchen table. The mood was giddy. We had warm food, two dogs, two cats, shelter, and one another. We had to dig a path for Cali. The snow was way over her head. She thought it was grand, though. A frolic. Her golden fur wore a halo of white.

The boys bedded down in the family room in front of the fireplace. My husband and I slept in our room under four blankets. Only my face was cold. But in the morning, it was getting harder to be cheerful. Almost out of firewood, we burned an old table that had been in the storage room. If we could get out of our street, we could go to a hotel. Oh, but not with a puppy who doesn't yet distinguish between the outside and the kitchen floor. More fireplace coffee, less fun this time.

For now, the power has returned. But the forecast is for another 8 to 12 inches starting tomorrow. A little snow is beautiful, but this is getting to be bad taste. We're grinding coffee and praying that the firewood will be delivered in the morning, as promised. Otherwise, I'm eyeing the kitchen chairs sadly.

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Super Bowl Ad Pokes Fun at "Green Police"

I don't know if Audi intended to make any kind of political statement with this Super Bowl ad, but I found it highly effective and exceedingly entertaining:



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